FTR #922 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 5: Walkin’ the Snake with “The Donald” (The Underground Reich Comes Into Plain View, Part 3)

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Dave Emory
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September 12, 2016 @ 8:51 pm
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Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash drive that can be obtained HERE[1]. The new drive is a 32-gigabyte drive that is current as of the programs and articles posted by early winter of 2016. The new drive (available for a tax-deductible contribution of $65.00 or more.) (The previous flash drive was current through the end of May of 2012.)

WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE[2].

Introduction: Cementing our analysis of The Trumpenkampfverbande, this program further develops information presented in FTR #921[8]. As noted in that program Trump has gone a long way in mainstreaming the rhetoric and ideology of white supremacism. Handmaidens in that effort are the media, who have been unfairly tough on Hillary Clinton while giving Trump a pass on issues of vital importance.

Former CNN host Soledad O’Brien attacked the cable news business has behaved irresponsibly in this election and presented a Serpent’s Walk-style platform for Nazi/white supremacist views: ” . . . ‘If you look at Hillary Clinton’s speech where she basically pointed out that what Donald Trump has done — actually quite well — has normalized white supremacy,’ O’Brien explained to CNN host Brian Stelter on Sunday. ‘I think she made a very good argument, almost like a lawyer. Here are ways in which he has actually worked to normalize conversations that many people find hateful. I’ve seen on-air, white supremacists being interviewed because they are Trump delegates,’ she noted. ‘And they do a five minute segment, the first minute or so talking about what they believe as white supremacists. So you have normalized that. . . . The former CNN host argued that the question that journalists should be asking is if Trump is ‘softening the ground for people — who are white supremacists, who are white nationalists, who would self-identify that way — to feel comfortable with their views being brought into the national discourse to the point where they can do a five minute interview happily on national television? And the answer is yes, clearly,’ she said. ‘And there is lots of evidence of that.’ . . .”

[9][10]O’Brien’s observation dovetails with our decades-long discussion of the Nazi tract Serpent’s Walk. The back cover of that book sums up the essence of the tome: ” . . .It assumes that Hitler’s warrior elite – the SS – didn’t give up their struggle for a White world when they lost the Second World War. Instead their survivors went underground and adopted some of their tactics of their enemies: they began building their economic muscle and buying into the opinion-forming media. A century after the war they are ready to challenge the democrats and Jews for the hearts and minds of White Americans, who have begun to have their fill of government-enforced multi-culturalism and ‘equality.’ . . .”

Think about how the media is treating Donald Trump–see the Soledad O’Brien analysis–and the way they are portraying Hillary Clinton is dramatic.

[11]

Waffen SS-clad World War II reenactors, in original photo used by Trump

Paul Krugman[12] noted the grotesque media bias against Hillary Clinton and the soft ball treatment to which they are subjecting Trump, comparing media handling of Al Gore versus their kid glove coverage of George W. Bush. We have noted the Hillary Clinton email non-scandal[13] in FTR #906[14]. (CORRECTION: Mr. Emory misspoke, saying that the “0.36 percent of Hillary’s e-mails constituted 12 e-mails. The number was 110, contained in a number of chains. That is according to Mitt Romney supporter James Comey.) Now, we are being treated to the Clinton Foundation non-scandal[15]. ” . . . .Meanwhile, we have the presumption that anything Hillary Clinton does must be corrupt, most spectacularly illustrated by the increasingly bizarre coverage of the Clinton Foundation. . . . Raising large sums for a charity that saves the lives of poor children sounds like a pretty reasonable, virtuous course of action. And the Clinton Foundation is, by all accounts, a big force for good in the world. For example, Charity Watch, an independent watchdog, gives it an “A” rating — better than the American Red Cross.

Now, any operation that raises and spends billions of dollars creates the potential for conflicts of interest. You could imagine the Clintons using the foundation as a slush fund to reward their friends, or, alternatively, Mrs. Clinton using her positions in public office to reward donors. So it was right and appropriate to investigate the foundation’s operations to see if there were any improper quid pro quos. As reporters like to say, the sheer size of the foundation “raises questions.”

But nobody seems willing to accept the answers to those questions, which are, very clearly, “no.”

Consider the big Associated Press report suggesting that Mrs. Clinton’s meetings with foundation donors while secretary of state indicate “her possible ethics challenges if elected president.” Given the tone of the report, you might have expected to read about meetings with, say, brutal foreign dictators or corporate fat cats facing indictment, followed by questionable actions on their behalf.

But the prime example The A.P. actually offered was of Mrs. Clinton meeting with Muhammad Yunus, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who also happens to be a longtime personal friend. If that was the best the investigation could come up with, there was nothing there. . . .”

Turning to the economic foundation of Trump’s business dealings–he markets himself politically as a successful businessman–we analyze the role of the remarkable and deadly Bormann group[16] in the corporate and media landscapes. In FTR #152[17], we highlighted the observation of one banker that the Bormann network is the largest concentration of money power under a single controlling structure in all of history.

In FTR #921[8], we noted Deutsche Bank and the other main funding sources for Trump’s real estate deals have major connections to the Bormann capital network[18]. The program notes that Deutsche Bank was a major vehicle for Bormann network purchases of stock in major American corporations, a dynamic that gives the Bormann group enormous leverage with those U.S. companies. By extension it gives them major influence in media affairs, through the exercise of advertising and investment policy.

“. . . . When Bormann gave the order for his representatives to resume purchases of American corporate stocks, it was usually done through the neutral countries of Switzerland and Argentina. From foreign exchange funds on deposit in Swiss banks and in Deutsche Sudamerikanishe Bank, the Buenos Aires branch of Deutsche Bank, large demand deposits were placed in the principal money-center banks of New York City; National City (now Citibank), Chase (now Chase Manhattan N.A.), Manufacturers and Hanover (now manufacturers Hanover Trust), Morgan Guaranty, and Irving Trust. Such deposits are interest-free and the banks can invest this money as they wish, thus turning tidy profits for themselves. In return, they provide reasonable services such as the purchase of stocks and transfer or payment of money on demand by customers of Deutsche bank such as representatives of the Bormann business organizations and and Martin Bormann himself, who has demand accounts in three New York City banks. They continue to do so. The German investment in American corporations from these sources exceeded $5 billion and made the Bormann economic structure a web of power and influence. . . .”

In addition, we note that corporate Germany is controlled by the Bormann network. “. . . Atop an organizational pyramid that dominates the industry of West Germany through banks, voting rights enjoyed by majority shareholders in significant cartels, and the professional input of a relatively young leadership group of lawyers, investment specialists, bankers, and industrialists, he [Bormann] is satisfied that he achieved his aim of helping the Fatherland back on its feet. To ensure continuity of purpose and direction, a close watch is maintained on the profit statements and management reports of corporations under its control elsewhere. This leadership group of twenty, which is in fact a board of directors, is chaired by Bormann, but power has shifted to the younger men who will carry on the initiative that grew from that historic meeting in Strasbourg on August 10, 1944. . . What will not pass is the economic influences of the Bormann organization, whose commercial directives are obeyed almost without question by the highest echelons of West German finance and industry. ‘All orders come from the shareholders in South America,’ I have been told by a spokesman for Martin Bormann. . . .”

The granting of advertising contracts to media outlets (print and broadcast) is a major vehicle for Bormann-group-controlled corporate Germany to influence journalism. The politically selective withholding of orders and advertising contracts is a vehicle for political control of journalism exercised by Third Reich business dating to the World War II period. It was articulated in a New York Herald Tribune article from May 31, 1940. “. . . . As far as the United States is concerned, the planners of the World Germanica laugh off the idea of any armed invasion. They say that it will be completely unnecessary to take military action against the United States to force it to play ball with this system. . . . Here, as in every other country, they have established relations with numerous industries and commercial organizations, to whom they will offer advantages in co-operation with Germany. . . .Cer­tain con­di­tions will have to be met. No orders will be taken from or given by per­son­al­i­ties unfa­vor­ably regarded by the Nazis.No adver­tis­ing con­tracts will be placed with news­pa­pers directed by or pub­lish­ing the work of pro-Ally or anti-Nazi edi­tors or writers. . . .”

The tactic continues to be exercised, as exemplified[19] by the business dealings of the Quandt corporation, manufacturers of the BMW and Audi automobiles, and invested with the operations of Daimler and Volkswagen as well. The firm is controlled by the heirs of Joseph Goebbels[20]. In FTR #155[21], we noted that major personalities in the Bormann network were the blood descendants of Third Reich luminaries. ” . . . Whenever the books section reviewed something about WWII or The Holocaust (which was often), BMW pulled their ads for that issue. . . . They were just very sensitive about it given their history. I was in the art dept so couldn’t tell you any details, it just became a running joke: ‘Oh, Ben has reviewed another WWII book! Ad sales will be pissed!’ . . . ”

The milieu of the “Alt Right,” Ron and Rand Paul, David Duke, the Ludwig von Mises Institute is the political environment[25] that spawned Donald Trump. ” . . . . Trump’s style and positions — endorsing and consorting with 9/11 truthers[26], promoting online racists[27], using fake statistics[28]— draw on a now-obscure political strategy called “paleolibertarianism,” which was once quite popular among some Republicans, especially former presidential candidate Ron Paul. . . . But it was [Murray] Rothbard’s founding of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in 1982 that enabled the fledgling political movement to establish affinity with the neo-Confederate Lost Cause movement. Almost immediately after its creation, the Mises Institute (headquartered in Auburn, Ala.) began publishing criticism[29] of “compulsory integration[30],” attacks on Abraham Lincoln [31] and apologia for Confederate leaders[32]. Institute scholars have also spoken to racist groups such as the League of the South[33]. Rothbard even published a chapter in his book “The Ethics of Liberty[34]” in which he said that “the purely free society will have a flourishing free market in children,” although he didn’t specify the races of the children who might be sold. . . . In the past few years, however, it’s been reborn as the alt-right, as a new generation of libertarians discovered their hidden heritage and began embracing racism and conspiracy theories. Many alt-right writers[35] trace their roots to Rothbard. As one of them, Gregory Hood, put it, paleolibertarian theories about race and democracy “helped lead to the emergence [of the] Alternative Right[36].” Rothbard’s call for “sovereign nations based on race and ethnicity[37]” is very similar to beliefs Trump’s alt-right supporters express today. . . .”

It should surprise no one that WikiLeaks has emerged[38] as the unofficial online dirty tricks branch of the Trump campaign.

Program Highlights Include:

Review of the links between UBS of Switzerland, another Trump creditor, and the Bormann network.

Review of the graduated nature of the Serpent’s Walk template and comparison with what is going on today.

1. Former CNN host Soledad O’Brien attacked the cable news business has behaved irresponsibly in this election and presented a Serpent’s Walk-style platform for Nazi/white supremacist views: ” . . . ‘If you look at Hillary Clinton’s speech where she basically pointed out that what Donald Trump has done — actually quite well — has normalized white supremacy,’ O’Brien explained to CNN host Brian Stelter on Sunday. ‘I think she made a very good argument, almost like a lawyer. Here are ways in which he has actually worked to normalize conversations that many people find hateful. I’ve seen on-air, white supremacists being interviewed because they are Trump delegates,’ she noted. ‘And they do a five minute segment, the first minute or so talking about what they believe as white supremacists. So you have normalized that. . . . The former CNN host argued that the question that journalists should be asking is if Trump is ‘softening the ground for people — who are white supremacists, who are white nationalists, who would self-identify that way — to feel comfortable with their views being brought into the national discourse to the point where they can do a five minute interview happily on national television? And the answer is yes, clearly,’ she said. ‘And there is lots of evidence of that.’ . . .”

Former CNN host Soledad O’Brien blasted the cable news business over the weekend for profiting off the hate speech that has fueled Donald Trump’s political rise.

According to O’Brien, the media had gone through “contortions to make things seem equal all the time” when comparing Trump to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

“If you look at Hillary Clinton’s speech where she basically pointed out that what Donald Trump has done — actually quite well — has normalized white supremacy,” O’Brien explained to CNN host Brian Stelter on Sunday. “I think she made a very good argument, almost like a lawyer. Here are ways in which he has actually worked to normalize conversations that many people find hateful.”

“I’ve seen on-air, white supremacists being interviewed because they are Trump delegates,” she noted. “And they do a five minute segment, the first minute or so talking about what they believe as white supremacists. So you have normalized that.”

“And then Donald Trump will say, ‘Hillary Clinton, she’s a bigot.’ And it’s covered, the journalist part comes in, ‘They trade barbs. He said she’s a bigot and she points out that he might be appealing to racists.’ It only becomes ‘he said, she said.’ When in actuality, the fact that Donald Trump said she’s a bigot without the long laundry list of evidence, which if you looked at Hillary Clinton’s speech, she actually did have a lot of really good factual evidence that we would all agree that are things that have happened and do exist. They are treated as if they are equal.”

O’Brien insisted “that’s where journalists are failing: the contortions to try to make it seem fair.”

The former CNN host argued that the question that journalists should be asking is if Trump is “softening the ground for people — who are white supremacists, who are white nationalists, who would self-identify that way — to feel comfortable with their views being brought into the national discourse to the point where they can do a five minute interview happily on national television?”

“And the answer is yes, clearly,” she said. “And there is lots of evidence of that.”

O’Brien observed that cable news outlets were effectively being rewarded for bad behavior.

“So hateful speech brings a really interested, angry audience,” she noted. “This is genius! We should do this more often. What shall we do when this election is over? We’re going to have to think about ways to really rile people up, make them angry and divide them.”

“Because that is something that cable news, frankly, and everybody can cover really well,” O’Brien lamented. “So, I find it very frustrating. I believe he was over-covered at the beginning.”

“Now, it is ‘he said, she said’ all the time. We have lost context. We actually don’t even cover the details of something. We just cover the back and forth of it. It’s funny to watch if it weren’t our own country and our own government actually operating.”

2a. Compare, also, the back cover of Serpent’s Walk with the Trump phenomenon.

It assumes that Hitler’s warrior elite – the SS – didn’t give up their struggle for a White world when they lost the Second World War. Instead their survivors went underground and adopted some of their tactics of their enemies: they began building their economic muscle and buying into the opinion-forming media. A century after the war they are ready to challenge the democrats and Jews for the hearts and minds of White Americans, who have begun to have their fill of government-enforced multi-culturalism and ‘equality.’

2b. The program notes the graduated nature of the takeover of American media by the Underground Reich.

. . . . About ten years ago, we swung a merger, a takeover, and got voting control of a supercorp that runs a small but significant chunk of the American media. Not openly, with bands and trumpets. . . . but quietly, one huge corporation cuddling up to another one and gently munching it up, like a great, gubbing amoeba.. . .. . . we have media psychologists, ad agencies, and behavior modification specialists working on image changes. . . . Hard to get people to love death camps. . . . We don’t try. . . . We play those aspects down and stress the positive ones instead: the efficiency and organization, the dedication, and the heroism. People will buy that. . . .

2c. Media bias in the current election campaign was compared with that of the 2000 election by Paul Krugman.

Americans of a certain age who follow politics and policy closely still have vivid memories of the 2000 election — bad memories, and not just because the man who lost the popular vote somehow ended up in office. For the campaign leading up to that end game was nightmarish too.

You see, one candidate, George W. Bush, was dishonest in a way that was unprecedented in U.S. politics. Most notably, he proposed big tax cuts for the rich while insisting, in raw denial of arithmetic, that they were targeted for the middle class. These campaign lies presaged what would happen during his administration — an administration that, let us not forget, took America to war on false pretenses.

Yet throughout the campaign most media coverage gave the impression that Mr. Bush was a bluff, straightforward guy, while portraying Al Gore — whose policy proposals added up, and whose critiques of the Bush plan were completely accurate — as slippery and dishonest. Mr. Gore’s mendacity was supposedly demonstrated by trivial anecdotes, none significant, some of them simply false. No, he never claimed[42] to have invented the internet. But the image stuck.

And right now I and many others have the sick, sinking feeling that it’s happening again.

True, there aren’t many efforts to pretend that Donald Trump is a paragon of honesty. But it’s hard to escape the impression that he’s being graded on a curve. If he manages to read from a TelePrompter without going off script, he’s being presidential. If he seems to suggest that he wouldn’t round up all 11 million undocumented immigrants right away, he’s moving into the mainstream. And many of his multiple scandals, like what appear to be clear payoffs to state attorneys general[43] to back off investigating Trump University, get remarkably little attention.

Meanwhile, we have the presumption that anything Hillary Clinton does must be corrupt, most spectacularly illustrated by the increasingly bizarre coverage of the Clinton Foundation.

Step back for a moment, and think about what that foundation is about. When Bill Clinton left office, he was a popular, globally respected figure. What should he have done with that reputation? Raising large sums for a charity that saves the lives of poor children sounds like a pretty reasonable, virtuous course of action. And the Clinton Foundation is, by all accounts, a big force for good in the world. For example, Charity Watch, an independent watchdog, gives it an “A” rating[44] — better than the American Red Cross[45].

Now, any operation that raises and spends billions of dollars creates the potential for conflicts of interest. You could imagine the Clintons using the foundation as a slush fund to reward their friends, or, alternatively, Mrs. Clinton using her positions in public office to reward donors. So it was right and appropriate to investigate the foundation’s operations to see if there were any improper quid pro quos. As reporters like to say, the sheer size of the foundation “raises questions.”

But nobody seems willing to accept the answers to those questions, which are, very clearly, “no.”

Consider the big Associated Press report[46] suggesting that Mrs. Clinton’s meetings with foundation donors while secretary of state indicate “her possible ethics challenges if elected president.” Given the tone of the report, you might have expected to read about meetings with, say, brutal foreign dictators or corporate fat cats facing indictment, followed by questionable actions on their behalf.

But the prime example The A.P. actually offered was of Mrs. Clinton meeting with Muhammad Yunus, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who also happens to be a longtime personal friend[47]. If that was the best the investigation could come up with, there was nothing there. So I would urge journalists to ask whether they are reporting facts or simply engaging in innuendo, and urge the public to read with a critical eye. If reports about a candidate talk about how something “raises questions,” creates “shadows,” or anything similar, be aware that these are all too often weasel words used to create the impression of wrongdoing out of thin air.

And here’s a pro tip: the best ways to judge a candidate’s character are to look at what he or she has actually done, and what policies he or she is proposing. Mr. Trump’s record of bilking students, stiffing contractors and more is a good indicator of how he’d act as president; Mrs. Clinton’s speaking style and body language aren’t. George W. Bush’s policy lies gave me a much better handle on who he was than all the up-close-and-personal reporting of 2000, and the contrast between Mr. Trump’s policy incoherence and Mrs. Clinton’s carefulness speaks volumes today.

In other words, focus on the facts. America and the world can’t afford another election tipped by innuendo.

3a. We review the profound relationship of the Bormann capital network and Deutsche Bank:

. . . . When Bormann gave the order for his representatives to resume purchases of American corporate stocks, it was usually done through the neutral countries of Switzerland and Argentina. From foreign exchange funds on deposit in Swiss banks and in Deutsche Sudamerikanishe Bank, the Buenos Aires branch of Deutsche Bank, large demand deposits were placed in the principal money-center banks of New York City; National City (now Citibank), Chase (now Chase Manhattan N.A.), Manufacturers and Hanover (now manufacturers Hanover Trust), Morgan Guaranty, and Irving Trust. Such deposits are interest-free and the banks can invest this money as they wish, thus turning tidy profits for themselves. In return, they provide reasonable services such as the purchase of stocks and transfer or payment of money on demand by customers of Deutsche bank such as representatives of the Bormann business organizations and and Martin Bormann himself, who has demand accounts in three New York City banks. They continue to do so. The German investment in American corporations from these sources exceeded $5 billion and made the Bormann economic structure a web of power and influence. The two German-owned banks of Spain, Banco Aleman Transatlantico (now named Banco Comercial Transatlantico), and Banco Germanico de la America del Sur, S.A., a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank served to channel German money from Spain to South America, where further investments were made. . . .

. . . . The [FBI] file revealed that he had been banking under his own name from his office in Germany in Deutsche Bank of Buenos Aires since 1941; that he held one joint account with the Argentinian dictator Juan Peron, and on August 4, 5 and 14, 1967, had written checks on demand accounts in first National City Bank (Overseas Division) of New York, The Chase Manhattan Bank, and Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co., all cleared through Deutsche Bank of Buenos Aires. . . .

3b. In FTR #’s 919[49] and 921[8], we noted the participation of UBS in Trump real estate deals.

. . . .In 1948 a suit was to be filed by certain minority stockholders of Interhandel against the attorney general of the United States, as successor to the wartime Alien Property Custodian, and the U.S. Treasury, for the return of 89 percent of GAF (the American branch of I.G. Farben), of a value of $100 million plus $1.8 million seized in cash in 1942. Interhandel, through its American attorneys, first filed an administrative claim, which was denied. The suit then went to the District Court for the District of Columbia, then to the Supreme Court, and back to District Court. The Swiss claim was based on the argument that Interhandel was a Swiss corporation, that it was not nor had it ever been an enemy of the United States, and that it owned the shares in question. The American government rebuttal was that Interhandel was the result of a conspiracy between the private bank of H. Sturzenegger, formerly E.Greutert & Cie., and I.G. Farbenindustrie of Germany and others “to conceal, camouflage, and cloak the ownership, control, and combination by I.G. Farben of properties and interests in many countries of the world, including the U.S.”

As the case dragged through the U.S. courts, Schmitz would have Interhandel cosmeticized even more. Charles de Loes, past president of the Swiss Bankers Association, would be elected chairman, and the general manager of each of the Big Three banks would be appointed to the board. They would agree to this because the honor of Swiss banking and its principle of banking secrecy would be at stake. In addition, 25 percent of Interhandel stock would be registered in the name of Union Bank, whose manager, Dr. Alfred Schaefer, was of known integrity. The Swiss believed the association of such a man of high banking repute at Interhandel would impress American government authorities. But the German connection would still be there. Not only Hermann Schmitz, but also the banking connection of Union Bank of Switzerland, Dr. Schaefer’s bank, and Deutsche Bank, which acted in concert on so many deals involving not only I.G. Farben but also big Ruhr industrialists such as Thyssen A.G., the largest steelmaker in Germany. In January 1978 these two lead banks, acting through the UBS-DBCorporation, an American firm of the Union Bank of Switzerland and the Deutsche Bank of Germany, would be the financial advisors for Thyssen A.G. in its $275 million cash takeover of the Budd Company of Troy, Michigan, a leading U.S. manufacturer of auto components, truck trailers, and rail cars. UBSDB Corporation would also say that the West German companies it represented were showing a “very substantial interest in all sorts of American ventures, including mergers and acquisition.” . . . .

4. In connection both with Trump’s real estate holdings and John P. Schmitz’s corporate work[56], we review the control of German industry and finance by the Bormann network.

. . . Atop an organizational pyramid that dominates the industry of West Germany through banks, voting rights enjoyed by majority shareholders in significant cartels, and the professional input of a relatively young leadership group of lawyers, investment specialists, bankers, and industrialists, he [Bormann] is satisfied that he achieved his aim of helping the Fatherland back on its feet. To ensure continuity of purpose and direction, a close watch is maintained on the profit statements and management reports of corporations under its control elsewhere. This leadership group of twenty, which is in fact a board of directors, is chaired by Bormann, but power has shifted to the younger men who will carry on the initiative that grew from that historic meeting in Strasbourg on August 10, 1944. Old Heinrich Mueller, chief of security for the NSDAP in South America, is the most feared of all, having the power of life and death over those deemed not to be acting in the best interests of the organization. Some still envision a Fourth Reich. . . What will not pass is the economic influences of the Bormann organization, whose commercial directives are obeyed almost without question by the highest echelons of West German finance and industry. ‘All orders come from the shareholders in South America,’ I have been told by a spokesman for Martin Bormann. . . .

5a. Again, a major element of discussion on this blog has been the spawning of the Bormann capital network[18] from the political and economic forces underpinning Nazi Germany. Controlling the German core corporations as well as powerful interests around the world, the Bormann group[16] is preeminent on the world economic landscape.

Noting that BMW and Audi are controlled by the heirs of Joseph Goebbels (whose stepchild inherited the Quandt industrial empire), A Bloomberg story notes that Mercedes-Benz also has significant capital participation by the Quandts.

In a series of comments on a blog, there was an exchange about BMW withholding ads[19] when Atlantic reviewed a book about the Holocaust or WWII. BMW is owned by the Quandt firm, headed for years by Joseph Goebbels’ son-in-law.

To gain perspective on the brilliant, far-sighted, thorough and altogether cynical policy realized by corporate Germany and the remarkable, deadly Bormann capital network that controls it, we recap Dorothy Thompson’s analysis of Germany’s plans for world dominance by a centralized European economic union. (In this, we can see the plans of pan-German theoretician Friedrich List, as realized by the European Monetary Union.) Ms. Thompson was writing in The New York Herald Tribune on May 31, 1940! Her comments are reproduced by Tetens on pages 92-93 .

“The Germans have a clear plan of what they intend to do in case of victory. I believe that I know the essential details of that plan. I have heard it from a sufficient number of important Germans to credit its authenticity . . . Germany’s plan is to make a customs union of Europe, with complete financial and economic control centered in Berlin. This will create at once the largest free trade area and the largest planned economy in the world. In Western Europe alone . . . there will be an economic unity of 400 million persons . . . To these will be added the resources of the British, French, Dutch and Belgian empires. These will be pooled in the name of Europa Germanica . . .”

“The Germans count upon political power following economic power, and not vice versa. Territorial changes do not concern them, because there will be no ‘France’ or ‘England,’ except as language groups. Little immediate concern is felt regarding political organizations . . . . No nation will have the control of its own financial or economic system or of its customs. The Nazification of all countries will be accomplished by economic pressure. In all countries, contacts have been established long ago with sympathetic businessmen and industrialists . . . . As far as the United States is concerned, the planners of the World Germanica laugh off the idea of any armed invasion. They say that it will be completely unnecessary to take military action against the United States to force it to play ball with this system. . . . Here, as in every other country, they have established relations with numerous industries and commercial organizations, to whom they will offer advantages in co-operation with Germany.

Cer­tain con­di­tions will have to be met. No orders will be taken from or given by per­son­al­i­ties unfa­vor­ably regarded by the Nazis.No adver­tis­ing con­tracts will be placed with news­pa­pers directed by or pub­lish­ing the work of pro-Ally or anti-Nazi edi­tors or writers.…

The Ger­man plan­ners pre­dict a stam­pede of the South to col­lab­o­rate with this sys­tem. This stam­pede will be fos­tered and directed by their agents.”…

. . .”

5b. About BMW withholding advertising money when The Atlantic ran stories about World War II and/or the Holocaust:

LondonLee (922)
I worked at The Atlantic when Wallace wrote a (terrific) feature for them about talk radio. According to our managing editor he was a sweetheart to deal with.

True: Whenever the books section reviewed something about WWII or The Holocaust (which was often), BMW pulled their ads for that issue. . . .

. . . They were just very sensitive about it given their history. I was in the art dept so couldn’t tell you any details, it just became a running joke: “Oh, Ben has reviewed another WWII book! Ad sales will be pissed!”

5v. About the Quandt corporation and its control by the heirs of Goebbels:

In the spring of 1945, Harald Quandt, a 23-year-old officer in the German Luftwaffe, was being held as a prisoner of war by Allied forces in the Libyan port city of Benghazi when he received a farewell letter from his mother, Magda Goebbels — the wife of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

The hand-written note confirmed the devastating news he had heard weeks earlier: His mother had committed suicide with her husband on May 1, after slipping their six children cyanide capsules in Adolf Hitler’s underground bunker in Berlin. . . .

. . . Quandt was released from captivity in 1947. Seven years later, he and his half-brother Herbert — Harald was the only remaining child from Magda Goebbels’ first marriage — would inherit the industrial empire built by their father, Guenther Quandt, which had produced Mauser firearms and anti-aircraft missiles for the Third Reich’s war machine. Among their most valuable assets at the time was a stake in car manufacturer Daimler AG. (DAI) They bought a part of Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) a few years later.

While the half-brothers passed away decades ago, their legacy has endured. Herbert’s widow, Johanna Quandt, 86, and their children Susanne Klatten and Stefan Quandt, have remained in the public eye as BMW’s dominant shareholders. The billionaire daughters of Harald Quandt — Katarina Geller-Herr, 61, Gabriele Quandt, 60, Anette-Angelika May-Thies, 58, and 50-year-old Colleen-Bettina Rosenblat-Mo — have kept a lower profile.

The four sisters inherited about 1.5 billion deutsche marks ($760 million) after the death of their mother, Inge, in 1978, according to the family’s sanctioned biography, “Die Quandts.” They manage their wealth through the Harald Quandt Holding GmbH, a Bad Homburg, Germany-based family investment company and trust named after their father. Fritz Becker, the chief executive officer of the family entities, said the siblings realized average annual returns above 7 percent from its founding in 1981 through 1996. Since then, the returns have averaged 7.6 percent.

“The family wants to stay private and that is an acceptable situation for me,” said Becker in an interview at his Bad Homburg office. “We invest our money globally and if it’s $1 billion, $500 million or $3 billion, who cares?” (Italics added.) . . .

8. In a transitional element to the next program–dealing with Snowden, WikiLeaks and the high-profile hacks–we note that Donald Trump’s ideology and rhetoric are a development and amplification of what we termed “The Paulistinian Libertarian Organization.”[24]In FTR #’s 755[22], 758[58] and 759[59], we have further developed the relationship between the Ron Paul milieu and WikiLeaks/Team Snowden.

Hillary Clinton and her campaign have been going out of their way to make a surprising argument about Donald Trump: He’s not really a Republican.

At the Democratic convention, several speakers[60] said Trump represented a complete break from the conservative traditions of the GOP. Last month, Clinton delivered a similar message[61] in a speech linking Trump to the white-nationalist political movement known as the “alt-right.” “This is not conservatism as we have known it,” she asserted.

According to Clinton — and many[62] conservative intellectuals[63] who oppose[64] Trump — the conspiratorial, winking-at-racists campaign he has been running represents a novel departure from Republican politics.

Formally, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) may be his father’s political heir. But there’s no question that the paranoid and semi-racialist mien frequently favored by Trump originates in the fevered swamps that the elder Paul dwelled in for decades. Most people who back Trump don’t do so for racist reasons, but it’s incredible how many of the same white nationalists and conspiracy theorists to whom Ron Paul once catered are now ardent Trump supporters. It’s because Trump and Paul speak the same language.

Mainstream libertarians have been agonizing over this legacy among themselves for some time, hoping[65] that either the elder or younger Paul would definitively denounce the movement’s racialist past, but no such speech has ever come. Instead, the paleolibertarian strategy concocted decades ago as a way to push for minimal government threatens to replace right-wing libertarianism with white nationalism.

* * *

The figure whose ideas unify Pauline libertarians and today’s Trumpists is the late Murray Rothbard, an economist who co-founded the Cato Institute and is widely regarded as the creator of libertarianism.

Nowadays, many libertarians like to portray their ideology as one that somehow transcends the left-right divide, but to Rothbard, this was nonsense. Libertarianism, he argued, was nothing more than a restatement of the beliefs of the “Old Right,” which resolutely opposed the New Deal and any sort of foreign intervention in the early 20th century. Many of its adherents, such as essayist H.L. Mencken[66], espoused racist viewpoints, as well.

As moderate Republicans such as Dwight Eisenhower and “New Right” Christian conservatives such as William F. Buckley became more influential within the Republican Party in the 1950s and ’60s, the future creators of libertarianism gravitated instead toward the work of secular anti-communist thinkers such as economist Ludwig von Mises and novelist Ayn Rand.

There had always been some sympathy for racism and anti-Semitism among libertarians — the movement’s house magazine, Reason, dedicated an entire issue in 1976[67] to “historical revisionism,” including Holocaust revisionism. It also repeatedly ran articles in defense[68] of South Africa’s then-segregationist government (though by 2016, the magazine was running articles like “Donald Trump Enables Racism[69]”). But it was Rothbard’s founding of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in 1982 that enabled the fledgling political movement to establish affinity with the neo-Confederate Lost Cause movement.

These and many other controversial views advocated by Mises writers make sense from a fanatical libertarian viewpoint. But they also originate in a political calculation Rothbard revealed in a 1992 essay[70] lamenting the defeat of Republican white nationalist and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke in the 1991 Louisiana governor’s race by a bipartisan coalition.

Expanding on themes raised two years earlier[71] by his longtime partner and friend Llewellyn “Lew” Rockwell, an editor and fundraiser for libertarian causes, Rothbard argued that Duke’s candidacy was vitally important because it made clear that the “old America” had been overthrown by “an updated, twentieth-century coalition of Throne and Altar” and its “State Church” of government officials, journalists and social scientists.

Besides commending Duke as an exemplar of the kind of candidate he was looking to support, Rothbard also invoked the “exciting” former senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin — not because of his economic views but because he was a brash populist prone to doing erratic things. Rothbard’s description of McCarthy seems eerily similar to the campaign that Trump has been running:

“The fascinating, the exciting, thing about Joe McCarthy was precisely his ‘means’ — his right-wing populism: his willingness and ability to reach out, to short-circuit the power elite: liberals, centrists, the media, the intellectuals, the Pentagon, Rockefeller Republicans, and reach out and whip up the masses directly. … With Joe McCarthy there was a sense of dynamism, of fearlessness, and of open-endedness, as if, whom would he subpoena next?”

To solve the problem that few Americans are interested in small government[72], Rothbard argued that libertarians needed to align themselves with people they might not like much in order to expand their numbers. “Outreach to the Rednecks” was needed to make common cause with far-right Christian conservatives who hated the federal government, disliked drugs and wanted to crack down on crime.

All of these paleolibertarian positions were offered in Duke’s 1990 Senate campaign and 1991 gubernatorial campaign. But they were also offered by another politician Rothbard admired: Ron Paul, the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate in 1988.

Rothbard and Paul had known and worked with each other in the 1970s, when they came to know Rockwell. Rockwell would work closely with both men, serving as Paul’s congressional chief of staff until he left to found the Mises Institute with Rothbard.

Rockwell also was the editor of a series of printed newsletters for both men in the ensuing decades. Paul’s publications became famous during his Republican presidential campaigns. Their controversial nature is no surprise, given that Paul had coyly endorsed the paleolibertarian strategy shortly after it was devised[73].

Sold under various titles, the highly lucrative newsletters frequently stoked racial fears[74], similar to what Trump has been doing this year, though they went further — one even gave advice on using an unregistered gun to shoot “urban youth.” Another issue mocked black Americans by proposing alternative names for New York City such as “Zooville” and “Rapetown,” while urging black political demonstrators to hold their protests “at a food stamp bureau or a crack house.”

Paul later said he didn’t write the newsletters[77]. But regardless of their authorship, the image they created made him attractive to white nationalists. Those supporters weren’t numerous enough to get Paul the GOP presidential nomination, however, and paleolibertarianism began fizzling out.

In the past few years, however, it’s been reborn as the alt-right, as a new generation of libertarians discovered their hidden heritage and began embracing racism and conspiracy theories. Many alt-right writers[35] trace their roots to Rothbard. As one of them, Gregory Hood, put it, paleolibertarian theories about race and democracy “helped lead to the emergence [of the] Alternative Right[36].” Rothbard’s call for “sovereign nations based on race and ethnicity[37]” is very similar to beliefs Trump’s alt-right supporters express today.

In 2016, many, if not most, of the extremists who formerly supported Paul have rallied to Trump’s side. In 2007, Paul won an endorsement and a $500 campaign contribution from Don Black[78], the owner of Stormfront, a self-described “white pride” Web forum. Despite a torrent of criticism, Paul refused to return the money[79]. This March, Black encouraged his radio listeners to vote for Trump[80], even if he wasn’t perfect.

…

After Rand Paul came to the Senate in 2011, and as he eventually began planning his own presidential campaign, there was some speculation that conservatives might be entering a “libertarian moment.” Things didn’t turn out that way. Instead, the American right seems to have entered a paleolibertarian moment.

[57] Germany Plots with the Kremlin by T.H. Tetens; Henry Schuman [HC]; 1953; pp. 92-93 [Supplemented by excerpts from the original New York Herald Tribune article, obtained from the library].: http://spitfirelist.com/books/germany-plots-with-the-kremlin/